In recent years, technologies such as Wi-Fi based on IEEE 802.11 standards have undergone tremendous growth and commercialization. In current market scenario, nearly all available user equipment (UE) with cellular capability support are integrated with Wi-Fi capability to connect with available Wi-Fi networks operating in the unlicensed frequency bands such as 2.4 GHz, or 5 GHz.
Implementation of 802.11ac and 802.11n with IEEE 802.11 standard (known as Wi-Fi) has enabled consumers to achieve high data rates over a wireless local network by utilizing wider channel widths. These wider channel widths specified in such implementations, such as 40 MHz, 80 MHz, 160 MHz, and 80 MHz, may be achieved via channel bonding on multiple consecutive or non-consecutive standard 20 MHz wide channels units (as proposed in early IEEE 802.11 standards, 802.11a/g) available in a wireless band.
Consequently, while allocating/assigning channels to a plurality of wireless access points (compliant to 802.11ac standard) for providing wireless services in a particular area, appropriate/optimal width constrained channels need to be selected for each access point available within the coverage. This, not only minimizes the conflict between access points due to overlapping channel widths, but also maximizes the utilization of available wireless band via wider channels, thereby improving the overall throughput of the wireless network.
Further, there exists several known solutions for using wider channel widths (specified in 802.11n and 802.11ac standards) in an optimum manner. One of the existing wireless solutions provide a static configuration to facilitate a fixed channel width mode to a plurality of access points providing wireless services in a particular area, wherein said width may be one of 160 MHz, 80 MHz, 40 MHz, 20 MHz and any such channel width that is currently available with 802.11ac standard.
An exemplary case of a typical network area comprises of four wireless access points deployed in hotspot areas for providing wireless services in the area to the users, wherein the access points operate on either of the different wireless channel widths specified in the 802.11ac standard. The access points receive information relating to their neighbouring access points along with their signal strength by scanning the available wireless band for a fixed time period or by static configuration. However, the static provisioning of wireless channel width poses certain limitations, one of which is overlap of wireless channels between two or more neighbouring access points due to scarcity of independent channels with the statically configured channel width value.
In an exemplary event of static configuration of 80 MHz channel width mode created for four access points that are neighbour to each other, the access points operate in an area/wireless band that allows only three independent 80 MHz wide channels. In such events, first two of the four access points will be allotted 2 separate channels of 80 MHz width; however, since there are only three available independent channels, the remaining two access points will share a common 80 MHz channel. This results in conflict between corresponding Base Service Stations (BSS) hosted by these two access points. The IEEE 802.11ac standard has specified a solution/technique to overcome the limitations occurred in static configuration by providing a mechanism to share a wide channel between two or more access points in an efficient manner. However, this mechanism is implemented only on firmware, and therefore may not be present on all wireless device for wireless services/operations.
Another limitation of the static provisioning of wireless bandwidth relates to underutilization of available wireless band. In an exemplary event of static configuration of 20 MHz channel width mode created for four access points that are neighbour to each other, the access points operate in an area where 120 MHz available spectrum comprises of six consecutive standard 20 MHz channels. In such events, four out of six independent 20 MHz wide channels are assigned to four of the APs, thereby resulting in 2 unassigned 20 MHz wide channels. Therefore, the unutilized 40 MHz bandwidth reduces total aggregate throughput.
Accordingly, in order to overcome the aforementioned problems inherent in the existing solutions for allocating bandwidth to access points, there exists a need of an efficient mechanism to sequentially allocate appropriately/optimally sized wireless channels to a plurality of wireless access points located in the available wireless band in optimum manner.